The Craft of Storytelling

A Tale of Two Tax Videos

A good tax professional is someone you call on when your April 15th filing nears. A great tax professional is someone you call on all year long. In the eyes of Thomson Reuters’ ONESOURCE tax division, these titans of enterprise are known by one name – Taxologists.

Taxologists are the fiduciaries of corporate finance, revered for their expertise in both tax and technology. They are problem solvers and strategic advisors. They manage complexity and mitigate risk. Where there is conflict between a company’s financial goals and its regulatory obligations, Taxologists are the ones wearing a cape around the office.

In recent years, we’ve worked with Thomson Reuters and ONESOURCE on a pair of video projects for their annual Synergy Tax Conference. For ONESOURCE, the Taxologist is a big part of their brand story. In a world where taxes are a cultural proxy for all that is institutional and outdated, the Taxologist is their brand’s protagonist, challenging people to think differently about the role tax professionals and technology play in a forward-looking enterprise.

When we craft a company’s story, we often think about it on two levels. At the highest level is the brand promise. It is the purest distillation of everything the brand represents, from who it is and what it does, to what makes it different and why it matters. A promise is the benchmark for everything the brand hopes to become.

We fulfill that promise through storytelling. Stories are how we relate to the world, and by extension, to the brands we admire. They shape how we perceive and understand a brand. A great story has meaning and intention, culminating in an objective met, an emotion felt, or an experience fully realized.

Any one brand can tell a number of stories. From the way it’s told to how it’s expressed, storytelling is an open road. But no matter how much one story might differ from the next, collectively they operate in service of the brand promise.

For the last two Synergy Tax Conferences, we have used the “Taxologist” as a storytelling tool to give voice to the ONESOURCE brand. On their own, each video tells its own story with a tone, style and narrative arc that are distinct. Where one is scripted, comedic and unexpected, the other is ad libbed, adorable and endearing. Yet in spite of their differences, they work in tandem and with common purpose to fulfill the promise of ONESOURCE.